Peering

Internap developed its Peering Policy to provide guidelines for interconnection candidates that wish to peer with Internap. Internap requires that peering candidates adhere to the below requirements and provide positive overall strategic benefit (such as increased reliability, end-customer performance or inter-provider capacity). Prospective peers should be advised that meeting the peering requirements established below (for either public or private peering) is not a guarantee that Internap will enter into a peering relationship. Internap reserves the right to deny prospective peers at its sole discretion.

Peering Requirements
The following requirements apply to both public and private peering relationships with Internap:

Prospective peers must maintain a PeeringDB record containing up-to-date contacts and technical specifications.

Internap will not enter into a settlement-free peering relationship with current IP transit customers (or their downstream customers), or organizations that have purchased IP transit services from Internap in the past 12 months.

Prospective peers must maintain a contiguous IP backbone, using a single AS number, and advertise to Internap a consistent set of routes in every peering location, unless otherwise mutually pre-arranged.

Internap expects prospective peers to peer at all exchange fabrics which Internap and prospective peer have in common if peering with prospective peer via public exchanges.

Prospective peers must maintain a professionally staffed and fully functional Network Operations Center (NOC) with 24×7 engineer support to assist with the mutual troubleshooting of any inter-provider issues.

Routing information is exchanged with peers via the Border Gateway Protocol version 4 only. Prospective peers may not, at any time, abuse the peering relationship by engaging in activities such as static routing to Internap, default routing to Internap or altering ‘next hops’ such that they are routing to Internap for networks which are not being advertised across the peering session. Internap monitors such activities closely and they are grounds for immediate disconnection.

Prospective peers must maintain ample capacity to the service location(s) at which prospective peers interconnect with Internap and proactively upgrade these connections such that they are never saturated.

Prospective peers must maintain an Internet Routing Registry (IRR) AS-MACRO, providing accurate information on the prefixes which prospective peers and their customers intend to advertise. Internap may build prefix-lists and/or AS-path filtering for prospective peers using data published in the IRR, or use the IRR as a tool for detecting any routing-related anomalies.

Internap practices “hot potato” routing to its prospective peers, and will not honor MEDs as a matter of standard practice. Requests for “cold potato” routing configurations with MEDs may be submitted by networks meeting Internap in multiple geographic regions and will be evaluated on an individual case basis.

Peering is a privilege and not a right. Unless Internap and a prospective peer enter into a separate agreement regarding peering services, Internap shall have no contractual obligation (including liability) to any peer as a result of this Peering Policy.

Internap reserves the right to modify this Peering Policy at any time and to discontinue any peering arrangement at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.